Usage recommendations

It is highly advised to use gems to buy premium plants, as some of them are available for a limited time only and you will not be able to buy them after the deadline. When you have brought all current gem premium plants, you can try to get more gems to be able to unlock new pots in the Zen Garden or for future plants.

It is best not to spend gems in the Zen Garden, sprouts, nor for costumes, as you can simply set your device's clock ahead several hours or use Bernie the Bee to bypass waiting, sprouts are overpriced and are dropped commonly in-game, and costumes do nothing except decorating plants, making it worthless. In addition, most costumes can be unlocked in Piñata Parties and Mystery Gift Boxes, although the ones that are store exclusive can be purchased.

The appearance of gems depends on luck. However, gems usually appear in Endless Zones, so you can play them to get more gems. If you do not like playing Endless Zones, you can replay some levels of worlds that have a lot of zombies. The best choices for this are levels from worlds with high difficulty since they usually have four flags and lots of zombies. On the other hand, you can play a simple and short level such as Pirate Seas - Day 22 or Lost City - Day 28 to earn coins in addition to the chance of obtaining gems.

If a gem premium plant is not available for a limited time, there is a chance that the price will lower and if you spend your gems early and the price lowers afterward, your gems will not be refunded. If you plan to not lose excessive amounts of gems, you can wait until the price of the plant in question gets cheaper.

Update history

In the 2.1.1 update, gems were introduced along with the Far Future world. They are the replacement for diamonds.

Around October 2014, gems can now be used to buy gem-premium or limited gem-premium plants.

Starting from the 2.9.1 update onwards, gems can be used to buy sprouts.

Also in the 2.9.1 update, the rate of gem drops was heavily decreased.

In the 3.2.1 update, the rate of gem drops had been increased.

In the 3.2.2 update on March 11, 2015, gems can now be used to buy costumes.

In the 3.5.1 update, the rate of gem drops had been increased once more.

In the 4.5.1 update, the rate of gem drops had been increased once again.

Trivia

Before the 2.1.1 update, these did not exist, and instead diamonds took their place, and had the value of 1,000 coins. In the 2.1.1 update, gems replaced diamonds and no longer had the value of 1,000 coins, now being used for other purposes.

There used to be a glitch that almost every zombie in a level would drop a gem when killed instead of only a few zombies. This was fixed in 2.8.1 update.

In Summer Bundle, there is a glitch that the gem will be replaced by "X" if the player does not have any sprouts yet.

All plants bought with these, including premium plants, are only shared for the current profile.

The maximum amount of these the player can have is 2,147,483,647 (231 - 1). Attempting to reach past this amount will result in the gem counter turning into the minimum negative amount (-2,147,483,648). This is usually only be done by hacking.

This happens because 2,147,483,647 (231 - 1) is the maximum value of signed 32-bit integer in computing, and attempting to reach a value higher than this results in an integer overflow.